Kadasomwa and nearby villages were left in ruins â€" corpses scattered, families torn apart, and entire communities forced to flee.
According to Lawrence Kanyuka, spokesperson for the AFC/M23 movement, the Banyamulenge of Minembwe bore the heaviest blow.
Dozens were killed, many others wounded without access to treatment, and entire villages emptied in panic. It is a grim pattern that has become tragically familiar in a region where civilians pay the highest price for a war that remains officially nameless.
Kanyuka stressed that these attacks leave AFC/M23 fighters with no choice but to intervene to protect civilians, describing this as part of their mandate. He condemned the silence of the international community, which continues to look away while atrocities mount.
A ceasefire only on paper
In April, Kinshasa and AFC/M23 signed a ceasefire agreement. Three months later, Doha hosted a formal reaffirmation of that fragile hope for peace. Yet on the ground, artillery fire has spoken louder than diplomatic signatures.
Troop convoys and armored vehicles poured in from Kisangani, Kalemie, and even Bujumbura, showing that the DRC never stopped preparing for war. Increasingly, civilians â€" particularly the Banyamulenge and Congolese Tutsi communities â€" have become the primary targets.
For Freddy Kaniki, president of the MRDP-Twirwaneho movement and vice president of the AFC, these are not isolated flare-ups but part of a calculated campaign: 'The genocide began in 2017 and is now in its final stage. They want to finish what they started; otherwise, there would be no reason to send troops to Minembwe, where some residents still remain.'
Statistics paint a chilling picture: 357 Banyamulenge villages burned in eight years and more than 700,000 cattle â€" the backbone of this pastoral community â€" looted.
Behind these figures lie shattered families, children denied an education, women driven into exile, and elders torn from their ancestral lands.
The silence of the world
Despite repeated warnings, the international community has turned away. Alice Wairimu Nderitu, then UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, raised alarm several times over the plight of the Banyamulenge. Her appeals were ignored.
At the same time, human rights organizations continue to produce reports targeting AFC/M23 and the Rwandan army , without credible evidence, reinforcing a narrative that masks and indirectly shields the crimes committed by Kinshasa and its allies.
'Whether they are Interahamwe, Wazalendo, or within Congolese government, their crimes are plain to see. Refugees arrive at our borders every day, while others are massacred in silence,' Rwandan President Paul Kagame declared on August 25, addressing troops in Gabiro.
Each new attack on civilians makes the Doha agreements increasingly meaningless.
Without international pressure on Kinshasa, the ceasefire has become little more than a diplomatic façade â€" a cover under which massacres and forced displacements continue unchecked.
And in eastern Congo, where war has become part of daily life, the Banyamulenge â€" like so many other communities â€" live with a haunting question: How much longer will the world stand by as they face slow extermination?
IGIHE
